Not on Hamilton’s pace throughout the weekend and his efforts in qualifying were impeded by Felipe Massa, who Button caught on a quick lap.

An unusual mistake at McLaren led to his early retirement:

I knew after the formation lap that there was a cooling cover left on the left-hand sidepod, where the radiator is.

We thought everything was going to be okay, and it would probably have been fine if we hadn?óÔé¼Ôäót had a Safety Car. My car quickly began to overheat and I started losing engine power, so I turned the engine off pretty sharply because the last thing I wanted was to leave engine oil on the racing line.

Today was just one of those days. It was human error, a mistake, and that?óÔé¼Ôäós all there is to it.Jenson Button

Fifth place on the grid was probably better than the MP4-25 deserved at a track which did not play to the car’s strengths.

Hamilton only set the tenth-fastest race lap and was noticeably struggling for pace at the end. So much so that he wasn’t leaving Fernando Alonso behind at that great a rate despite Alonso having spent longer on his tyres.

McLaren’s radio communications revealed they were concerned about brake temperatures during the race.

It seems to be down to the characteristics of the car. This was one of the tracks they looked forward to last year (only for Hamilton to crash in qualifying), this year it could be one of their weakest venues.

I suppose Bahrain showed that the Mclaren struggled through the twisty second sector. The F duct probably plays to fast tracks more, and their long wheelbase won’t help at Monaco.
However, I didn’t know that they looked forward to this race last year. Wasn’t the MP4-24 seriously lacking in downforce? I thought Monaco was a high downforce track, as shown by the RBs!

Monao isn’t a high downforce track, it’s a track you want lots of downforce for. The reason the two aren’t one and the same is because Monaco is so slow that generating aerodynamic downforce is much more difficult. What a car needs is good mechanical grip, which the MP4-24 (and BGP001) had last year. In the quest for downforce this year, McLaren have made their car suit stability in fast corners at the expense of speed out of slow ones.

Red Bull have done so well here because the RB6 is a downforce-producing machine, and isn’t as weak as the RB5 was for mechanical grip, maybe because they’ve had to make less sacrifices in design for that downforce than McLaren have.

If Ron were still here things would have been different.
McLaren has not been fast at Monaco because they switched to black wheels.
With the original silver wheels they showed at the car presentation, the car would have more grip in the slow corners, specially when the tyres are starting to wear off.

Come on Keith… the lap that Felipe spoilt wasn’t going to be glorious, surely? It didn’t look it on the live timing, or maybe my Ferrari Fan brain isn’t remembering the board clearly for that point in the proceedings ;-)

Interesting that the stewards penalised a driver that overtook a Ferrari, but not a Ferrari that potentially blocked a mediocre lap from Button.

Jenson’s lap during which he was held up was not going to be a pole-position lap by any means, but I think it would have been better than his ultimate qualifying position.

I’m a huge Jenson fan, but his starts are not the best, and I think he gets a little too cautious about traffic going into the first corner and ends up losing positions for the sake of car/race preservation. I think this is especially true after spending so much time at the back of the pack during previous seasons.